Page 1 of Survivor
Chapter 1
Lucy
Three flights of stairs.
Forty-eight steps.
It took no more than a couple of minutes for the ordinary human. I’d been at it for over an hour and still had seven steps to go.
Of course, I wasn’t normal. Hadn’t been since that moment four months before my tenth birthday when the doctors gave my penchant for fatigue and bruising a name. Acute Myeloid Leukemia. After that, my life became anything but normal. While most ten-year-old girls enjoyed school and learned to hate their hair, I frequently found myself sequestered in the hospital, losing my hair and battling for survival.
Chemotherapy kept my immune system in an upheaval, so there were no dances, no Friday nights at the movies, and no friends. There were just needles and drugs and pain.
I’d made it to remission a couple of times. Once long enough to visit the beach for vacation. The second time, I got to attend my last year of middle school and three months of my freshman year of high school before my platelets bottomed out again. The best year and a half of my life. I loved school. Granted, my education had been far from normal, but I’dalways been a voracious reader and passed the GED easily. I didn’t want to die without a high school diploma—it just seemed too pathetic. I’d even participated in matriculation via video conferencing. My parents attended in person, whooping and hollering when my name was called to the point of embarrassment. It was my last vivid memory of them.
I was supposed to go first. But fate had other plans. Fate and a long-haul trucker named Digger, who’d fallen asleep at the wheel when my parents were on their way to the hospital for my daily visit. My parents fought with everything they had to keep me alive. After their deaths, it just didn’t seem worth the fight anymore. So, when Dr. Warren suggested another round of chemo due to my spiraling platelet count—I just said no. He argued, of course, but I was over eighteen—just barely, and I was tired.
I’d never go to college, never be an astronaut like my grandfather Pete, and never have a boyfriend other than another patient with whom the topic of conversation always veered to, which one of us do you think will die first? Yet there was one thing I wanted before I took my last breath. I wanted to see the stars again, and not through the dirty window from my hospital room.
My fondest pre-sick memories were of lying on the grass with my grandfather and gazing up at the night sky while he told me of asteroids and comets, quarks and nebulas, and far-off galaxies with stars dotting the sky like glistening gems. I wanted to experience that one last time.
Hence the stairs.
Granted, I’d be lying with the hospital roof under my back instead of grass, but as long as I had an unfettered view of the cosmos when I drew my last breath, I’d die satisfied.
And I was fairly certain my last breath would come tonight. It was the way a lone tear traveled down Nurse Jolie’scheek when she accompanied Dr. Warren into my room this morning. It was the way Dr. Warren heaved a heavy sigh before explaining that my liver function was as kaput as my kidneys. Not to mention, I felt like hammered shit—more hammered than usual. Thankfully, the morphine made it possible to complete my quest without too much agony.
I pulled myself up the last step and onto the landing, rolling onto my back and breathing through the dizziness. One last barrier.
The roof door came equipped with one of those peculiar alarm latches that emitted an incessant, grating screech when opened without the proper key. Fortunately, among the patients in the cancer ward was a sixteen-year-old named Jasper—a right kleptomaniac. I had shared with him my yearning to gaze at the stars one last time, and he’d produced a set of pilfered janitor’s keys, happily handing over a small silver bauble to aid my quest.
Disengaging the lock proved a cumbersome task, especially since I hadn’t been able to stand without nearly passing out for over a week. Yet, I managed, balancing precariously on my knees while leaning heavily against the cold concrete wall for support. With one final, desperate push that drained the last of my strength, I pushed the door open and rolled out onto the hospital rooftop.
It wasn’t the loveliest of places, with its stark concrete and scattered debris, but the breeze was refreshingly cool against my skin. Above me, the sky stretched vast and clear, a canvas of deep indigo sprinkled with twinkling stars that shimmered like a scattering of diamonds.
I focused on the velvet night sky, letting my body go lax. Letting go. The stars appeared to sway and twirl, the celestial dance drawing nearer until it felt almost within reach. I yearned to touch the shimmering expanse, to feel the cool embrace ofthe cosmos. Yet I lacked the strength to lift even a single finger toward the heavens.
A faint roaring tickled my ears, reminiscent of a distant engine revving in the night. Gradually, the stars above seemed to gather and merge into a shimmering veil of light and darkness that lay over me like a blanket. There was movement within the stars, and the touch of gentle hands soothing my body.
Damn! I thought angels would be prettier. In every image and painting I’d ever seen, they were ethereal and majestic. But then again, I doubted anyone who had ever painted an angel did it from first-hand experience. A chuckle of amusement bubbled in my chest as I imagined the wave of disappointment that would follow people discovering angels resembled hairless cats.
Suddenly, a loud slam shattered the stillness, followed by a piercing scream that ricocheted through the air. It sounded like Nurse Jolie, and I felt a pang of regret that she had to be the one to find me like this.
The roaring intensified, kicking my ASMR into overdrive, a tingling sensation pricking along my scalp and spine. I felt weightless, suspended between this world and the next. There was no more pain. There was no more anything. With a last sigh, I gave myself over to oblivion.
Chapter 2
Vraxxan
The library was my favorite place. I loved how the light filtered through the overhead windows, tinged with the colors found within the stained glass. I loved the silence, keeping this place sacred, guarding against the chaos that invaded much of the castle. I loved the knowledge. The history, and lore of my people and others contained in the multicolored volumes that dotted the walls like jewels. Most of the castle was sparse and cold, but here, the warmth and coziness enveloped one like a hug. In my youth, I had dreams of becoming a scholar and spending my life in hallowed halls such as these. But that dream crumbled to dust under the auspices of the queen, like so many others.
The stone door gave a deep groan as it pushed open, and I smiled to myself upon catching the scent of the intruder. My cousin always knew where to find me.
“Hiding?” Diarvet sauntered up to the wooden table I occupied, the top littered with tomes and scrolls. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
I cringed at his words. “Is she still in a mood?”
Diarvet gave a full-body shudder. As a member of the queen’s guard, he did not have the opportunity to escape hernotice as often as I did. “Do you mean is she still upset about the fact that the Alliance Prime threatened to destroy Zarpazia unless she removed the bounty from the human female’s head?” He gave another deep shudder. “Yes, I believe her screeching this morning was about that very thing.”
